The Cumulative Effect Of The Pre-Irenaean Sources On Gospel Authorship

I've sometimes linked a collection of resources I put together on the best and earliest evidence for the authorship of the gospels. A mistake that can be made when evaluating that kind of evidence is to view the information in too isolated a manner. There's a cumulative effect to the evidence, and sometimes two or more things take on an added significance when considered together, a significance they wouldn't have if considered individually.

Christian Life As Springtime And Joy

"Our childhood [in Christ] again brings the freshness of morning, and we live in perpetual springtime, always young, always mild, always new, but always growing in maturity. We are the children carried on the shoulders of God. [quoting Clement of Alexandria] 'Our life is a perpetual springtime; because the truth within us cannot be touched by old age, and our whole way of living is saturated by this truth' (paed 1.5.20.4). Our relation to God as children in Christ is one of joy, of divine or mystic sport….For Clement, man is, by definition, a rational laughing animal (8.6.21), Christ has turned all sunsets into sunrises and Christian life is a season of ever-renewed springtime. A fragment of his instructions to the newly baptized exhorts them to cheerfulness: 'show always that you are a partner and partaker of Christ, who shines the light of God from heaven. Let Christ be to you continuous and unceasing joy.'" (Eric Osborn, Clement Of Alexandria [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 245, 276)

Clement Of Alexandria On Christian Intellectual Neglect

"Pagans had to find the treasure which was in Christ. Christians had to explore it, to advance beyond the mediocrity in which they slumbered. Tertullian spoke at this time of 'nostra mediocritas'. Faith must grow into knowledge. Clement showed more sympathy with Gnostic sects than did his contemporaries; at least Gnostics saw the need to move on. His own ideal, the true gnostic or man of knowledge, was within the reach of all believers….his chief concern was to join Athens and Jerusalem….The farmer needs to learn different skills if he wants to cultivate, just as the doctor and hunter need to learn many things if they are to heal or hunt. And so must he who wishes to gain from the scripture and from Christ learn all rational and logical skills. He must go to geometry, music, grammar and philosophy itself and take from them what is useful, in order to defend his faith against those who plot to destroy it. If he does not do this, he is, as Plato says, like the athlete who turns up unprepared for the games (Rep. 3.404ac)….'How can it not be necessary, for him who wishes to lay hold of the power of God, to philosophise and to grasp with comprehension intellectual concepts?' (1.9.44.3). He who reads the bible must know how to detect ambiguities and multiple meanings in the biblical text; this is where philosophy helps….There is no doubt that the joining of Athens and Jerusalem in Philo and Clement provided a major element of western culture." (Eric Osborn, Clement Of Alexandria [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 24-5, n. 84 on 25, 63-4, 104)

Clement Of Alexandria And Roman Catholicism

Here are some comments from Eric Osborn, a patristic scholar who specialized in the study of Clement:

These Nonsensical Objections from Bryan Cross are Not to be Trusted

In addition to Bryan’s “begging the question” objection, he placed several other predictable objections to Gregg Allison’s work,“Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment”.

Bryan’s objections begin here.

At one point, discussing an interview in conjunction with the release of the book, Bryan is kind enough to note, “In the next part of the interview, as Allison lays out the Catholic system, he does so quite fairly and accurately.” A few lines down, however, we see this:

So Allison starts his interview affirming the importance of approaching the question systematically and evaluating the Catholic paradigm on its own terms, but already here he is (a) making use of a consumerism approach as a way of critiquing the Catholic paradigm, which rejects the consumerism paradigm, and (b) making use of his biblicist assumption (“not biblical”) to critique the Catholic paradigm. So instead of evaluating the Catholic paradigm on its own terms, he is evaluating it on Evangelical terms, and thus begging the question.

In the book, which Bryan appears not to have read so far, there is clearly an effort to present both sides in an objective way; that is, the Catholic viewpoint “fairly and honestly”, and also, the “Evangelical” assessment, “fairly and honestly”. That is a hallmark of the book.

But in his critique, Bryan makes some assumptions of his own here. I’ve extended these from two to three (breaking the “consumerism” objection into two parts):

A. Allison makes use of a “consumerism approach”
B. The “Catholic paradigm” rejects the “consumerism paradigm”
C. Allison works with “Biblicist” assumptions (not “biblical” assumptions)

Let’s look at Bryan’s objections here one at a time: